Scars
by n00b-masta2112
Summary: "Physical pain has never been difficult for me, I realize as I watch blood pool in my cupped palm. This is nothing." Scars should be a constant reminder of what the Capitol turned Haymitch into, but they took those from him too.


**Scars**

Physical pain has never been difficult for me, I realize as I watch blood pool in my cupped palm. This is nothing.

I am hunched against a wall, the single light bulb hanging above the table flickering dimly in the midnight darkness. The floor around me is littered with broken glass and spilled whiskey. I had another episode. It's been happening a lot lately. I get caught in the dark remembering terrible things, Hunger Games things. They start to take over. I'm living the nightmares I try so hard to escape. Rage and regret and sorrow build up inside me and another part of me breaks. I'm losing it. A few minutes ago I threw every empty bottle in this godforsaken place to the floor. Shattered everything.

Now I'm calm, and oddly numb. After my outburst I stumbled, stupidly drunk, to the floor, cutting myself on the broken glass. Slicing the skin the Capitol repaired years ago, erasing all bodily evidence of my time in the arena. Removing the scars on the outside never healed the ones left on the inside. I'm broken. Every bit of me. I may as well be dead.

If only, if only.

My hands have small shards of glass lodged in them. Blood flows from the tiny lacerations and gathers in my palms. I'm holding it. Red and sticky and beautiful. I've seen enough blood to last me several lifetimes, but something about being in control of where it goes and comes from and something about it being mine and no one else's feels better, almost liberating. The Capitol didn't cause this bloodshed. This is all mine.

The neck of a bottle lying a foot away on the floor catches my eye. It's jagged where the rest of the bottle broke off, sharp, clear edges reflecting the weak light. Dangerous. I reach for the piece of glass and pick it up gently around the unbroken part. The little glass fibers already fixed in my hand push further into my skin. It stings. I sigh.

The half bottle gleams in my hand, smiling at me, winking.

A clock in the entryway chimes once. There's so much darkness left in the night.

I grip the broken bottle tighter in my hand and lean back, my head resting against the wall gently. I close my eyes and try to breathe steadily, regain my composure. My head is pounding, my hands are throbbing, my heart is aching, and I refuse to sleep.

But it comes anyway. In my dream, I'm staggering through a forest. This is nothing new. My innards are coming out through a deep gash in my abdomen. Blood leaks between my fingers as I press my weary hands against the wound. It's the last moments of the 50th Hunger Games. My Hunger Games. The familiar nightmare has grown tiresome to me, but I can't wake myself up.

There's another figure behind me—the other remaining tribute. She's panting heavily, her footsteps are loud, hammering in my ears, or is that just my headache?

Then the nightmare shifts into something I've never seen before. The edges of the scene fray and grow blurry. The Capitol's anthem blares everywhere, out of tune and eerie sounding. Blood trickles from my ears as the volume builds. With every ragged beat of my heart, the whole picture shakes. I feel like I may throw up.

And then I do. I've reached the edge of the arena—my cliff—and collapsed on the dusty ground, heaving again and again, blood pouring from my mouth and my stomach and every one of the many injuries plaguing my body. My vision swims in red, and I'm drowning. It's everywhere. Blood. Every dead tribute, all 46, float in the thick red ocean, and their blank faces stare accusingly at me.

"I didn't!" I try to shout at them. "It's not my fault!"

But no sound comes out.

My lips are sewn together.

My tongue cut out.

Then the only opponent left—the girl from District 1—swims into my view. Her axe has already left her hand. She's smirking down at me, somehow standing atop the blood, somehow above the rest of us. She thinks she's won, but I know the secret of the force field below the cliff. I'm not afraid of her.

I roll out of the way of the projectile weapon and it sails over the edge, where a waterfall of thick blood cascades down into the abyss. I feel like sobbing as I'm swept away.

As the red current carries me over the edge and away from her, the District 1 tribute is struck with her own axe as it comes hurtling up from the canyon below. I don't flinch, not surprised as it buries itself in her head. There's a thud, crack, and grotesque squishing sound as it breaks through her skin, smashes through her skull and enters her brain. She falls impossibly slowly, backward, into the ocean with everyone else.

The anthem that is still playing is joined by a barrage of cannon fires, louder than I ever remember them, repeating and repeating until tears swim at the corners of my eyes. I can't hear. I can't see. I can barely think, but I'm alert enough to count the cannon fires. Forty-seven. I fall and fall and fall, surrounded by blood and bodies, bombarded by cannon fires, one for each dead child with me. And I cry.

I cry because I didn't mean to win. I didn't mean for them all to die.

The waterfall keeps tumbling over the cliff, carrying the blood and corpses and me down until I'm surrounding by darkness. There's nothing here but blackness. I wonder when we will be reflected off the barrier and hurled back up to the harsh sunlight. I wonder when I must face the rest of the world to stand on a platform and receive my victor's title and all that comes with it.

The black disappears too suddenly, and I find myself blinking away the white spots in front of my eyes. The light hurts and I'm burning. I'm on fire. What's happening? The scene swims into focus and I see people with dyed skin and white coats standing over me, their fingers working over my exposed body. They're fixing me, someone says. I lift my head and see my scars vanishing as the people run their machines over them.

"Stop!" I try to say, then I remember my mouth.

My lips are sewn shut.

My tongue cut out.

I cannot speak. I want to scream at them to leave me alone. These are my scars, and I cannot allow myself to forget what I have done. Or what the Games have done to me. What the Capitol has done to me.

This is their way of making me forget, and it's more terrifying than drowning in a sea of blood.

As much as I think I want to, I can never forget.

Scars are meant to be my reminder. I want them. I need them.

My silent screams slowly escalate into real ones, and I'm jolting awake back in my kitchen, surrounded by the shattered glass. I'm sweating, panting, clutching the bottle in my hand so hard pain shoots up the rest of my arm and finally registers in my mind. I stop screaming and slacken my hold.

I bite my tongue to make sure it's still there. I glance down at the rest of my body, and relive the nightmare. My scars have been erased by the Capitol. They've been gone for 25 years and I've still been unable to forget.

How dare they take my scars, my punishment for becoming their puppet? To remember is the worst of it all, but it's something I must do. I deserve to hurt like this.

I killed so many.

So many have died.

I lift the broken bottle and scrape the serrated side down my other arm as hard as I can, gasping at the pain and seeing stars. I raise my hand and do it again, then across my abdomen. This is where my scars should be, I tell myself.

I drift in and out of consciousness, aware the whole time of the growing wetness along my arm and the front of my shirt. My eyes find the lacerations. Rivers of red flow down my arm. An ocean forms on my stomach and chest.

I'm drowning again.

But alone.

As I should be.


End file.
